The Wesley Prayer Challenge Participant Book: 21 Days to a Closer Walk with Christ

By Adam Hamilton and Chris Folmsbee

The Wesley Covenant Prayer has been used in Methodist services around the world on the first Sunday of the year since John Wesley introduced it in 1755. Wesley expected that people would pray this prayer as a way of remembering, renewing, and surrendering themselves in complete trust to God. When we pray it, we are to remember what living like Jesus looks like and what loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind and loving our neighbor as ourselves requires of us.


In The Wesley Prayer Challenge, author Chris Folmsbee invites readers to consider words from the Wesley Covenant Prayer each day for three weeks while reflecting on their meaning in the context of the larger piece.


Each day’s reading will include scripture, prayer, and a challenge for daily life.


Additional components for a three-week study include a comprehensive leader guide and a DVD featuring author Chris Folmsbee.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Oct 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781791007225

Adam Hamilton

Adam Hamilton is the founding pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. Started in 1990 with four people, the church has grown to become the largest United Methodist Church in the United States with over 18,000 members. The church is well known for connecting with agnostics, skeptics, and spiritual seekers. In 2012, it was recognized as the most influential mainline church in America, and Hamilton was asked by the White House to deliver the sermon at the Obama inaugural prayer service. Hamilton, whose theological training includes an undergraduate degree from Oral Roberts University and a graduate degree from Southern Methodist University where he was honored for his work in social ethics, is the author of nineteen books. He has been married to his wife, LaVon, for thirty-one years and has two adult daughters.

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INTRODUCTION

I was in college when I first came across the Wesley Covenant Prayer. I grew up in a church with reformed theological perspectives, so John and Charles Wesley and the Methodist movement were not talked about much in my youth. While doing some research for a paper in one of my theology classes—my second year of college, I think it was—I came across the Wesley Covenant Prayer and thought, How in the world have I not ever heard this prayer before? Why has no one taught me this prayer?

A few weeks later, I was attending a Methodist church with a friend of mine over winter break, and I read an announcement in his church bulletin for a Wesley Covenant Prayer Service on the first Sunday in January. I was already captivated by the prayer and, by this time, had developed a habit of using it as my Monday morning prayer—to get my week off to a good start. The concept of a Wesley Covenant Prayer Service was new to me, just like the prayer had been only a few short months earlier. I leaned over to my college buddy and said, What is this? and pointed to the Covenant Service announcement in the bulletin. Oh, that, he said. That’s nothing. It’s a boring service we have every year. I used to go when I was a kid. I haven’t been in about five years. Let’s come back for it, I said. Really? he said.

A couple of weeks after I read the announcement, we drove the ninety or so minutes to his rural church on the first Sunday of the new year. We invited a few of our friends to join us. My friend promised them a home-cooked meal. There were a handful of people there—mostly older people—and the handful of us who packed the car, mainly for a free home-cooked meal. I could tell the pastor was very pleased to see us. He greeted us with a smile and welcomed us with a sweet invitation to let the prayer wash over us and fill our hearts with a renewed passion for God and others. I remember the pastor’s welcome being nearly as impactful as the prayer service itself.

The service was simple. Simpler than I expected it to be, actually. I wasn’t disappointed; I just imagined going into the experience that the service would be longer and have more moving parts, so to speak. We didn’t even sing a hymn, it was so simple. I’m not positive that this was the exact order of worship, but it’s close:

Welcome

Opening Prayer

Scripture Reading

Reading of Wesley Covenant Prayer

Confession

Homily

Blessing & Benediction

I was moved deeply by the service. In its simplicity, I experienced a profound sense of renewal, as was its purpose. I found new meaning in my understanding of what it means to be a Christian and my pursuit to be like Christ. The Wesley Covenant Prayer Service I experienced that day was one of just a few worship experiences that changed the trajectory of my life. Because of the commitment of that church’s members to renew their faith together every year, and because of that particular pastor’s warm greeting and invitation to be open to God’s work in my soul that day, I am changed. I am grateful for that experience. That prayer service is a marker in my life. When I am struggling to remain faithful to my commitment to Christ, I think back to that day and I am served with a reminder of what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus.

After college, I lost track of the Wesley Covenant Prayer for a while. It wasn’t until I began attending the church I currently serve, The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection near Kanas City, that I was reacquainted with another Covenant Service and began to live into my once-formed habit of Monday prayer.

For a decade, I have wanted to write this book—to give people a chance to either meet the prayer for the very first time or to be reintroduced to the prayer so that an experience of renewal might help lead them toward becoming a deeply committed disciple of Jesus. The daily reflections presented here are my attempts to interpret and break down the prayer into bite-sized portions for simpler contemplation and integration. As you will discover, my understanding of the Wesley Covenant Prayer goes beyond an individual prayer and emphasizes a communal sense of renewal. Through this, we understand the church as the primary agency that God is stirring to call its people to participate with God to restore the world toward its intended wholeness.

Before we go any further, let’s take a moment to read the prayer. You may want to come back to the introduction so that you might reflect on the daily commentary within the context of the whole prayer. Here is the traditional version of the prayer:

I am no longer my own, but thine.

Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.

Put me to doing, put me to suffering.

Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,

exalted for thee or brought low for thee.

Let me be full, let me be empty.

Let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and heartily yield all things

to thy pleasure and disposal.

And now, O glorious and blessed God,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.

And the covenant which I have made on earth,

let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

Over the next twenty-one days, or however you choose to make your way through this book, I pray that you’ll experience the peace and calming that so many have experienced over the years. Whether you choose this journey on your own or with a group (which I think is a very powerful way), I pray that you’ll be stirred to renew and recommit your life to Christ. I pray that this renewal and recommitment will draw others to God’s love as you faithfully attempt to live as the prayer guides you. This prayer, if you let it, will wreck your life. There is a very good chance that this prayer will change your perspective and your worldview. In fact, I would almost guarantee that if you open your heart and mind, and your hands for God’s work, you’ll never be the same again.

As you faithfully engage the principles and precepts in this prayer, they will change you, and hopefully those around you. The prayer is a call to discipleship; it is a call toward Christian perfection, or a total love for God and others. This prayer, deeply rooted in God’s intended ways of life we see so clearly expressed in Jesus, is meant to demolish all of our immorality and, in its place, produce lifelong fruit. In the end, I pray that each of us will have a heart so full of God’s holy love that there isn’t room for anything else.

The Wesley Covenant Prayer was not actually original to John Wesley. Richard Alleine’s prayer A Vindiciae Pietatis or Vindication of Godliness was the impetus for what we refer to as the Wesley Covenant Prayer as John Wesley adapted it for the first ever Covenant Service in August of 1755. The first covenant service is said to have had more than 1,800 people in attendance. Wesley is quoted to have said, Such a night I scarce ever saw before. Surely the fruit of it shall remain for ever. From August of 1755 until now, the Covenant Service has been adapted, revised, and customized to meet the needs of congregations around the world.

This prayer is a means of grace and is meant for the Holy Spirit to empower our progress in our salvation. This salvific way, then, is meant to shape the behaviors of our life, enacting justice for the oppressed and producing an everyday kindness with which we love our neighbor with the same passion in which Jesus loves us. If the gospel is God’s will, way, and work of providing salvation and justice for all, then we are leaving things undone if we merely see this prayer as a personal, internal aid to our own holiness. This prayer, to be in keeping with the life of Christ and Wesleyan theology, must be seen as a prayer for us and for the sake of the other.

I believe God’s will is that the world be made whole. God’s way of making the world whole is through the person and work of Jesus. God’s work is done through the church, you and me, accepting our calling to be the light and to live out our salvation in a way that reminds the lonely, anxious, seeking, exploring, wondering world that God has not forgotten them. For the Wesley Covenant Prayer to be what I believe Wesley intended for it to be, it must change our lives and the lives of others.

If you’d like to renew your commitment to Christ, this book is for you. As you engage it, take seriously the intentions of the Wesley Covenant Prayer and integrate those intentions into your life, turning them into realities, and you’ll be amazed at the fruit God produces within you that impacts the world around you. God bless you as you dig deep and work toward a closer walk with Christ.

PART ONE

SURRENDER

AND SUFFERING

PART ONE

SURRENDER

AND SUFFERING

Two concepts that are in conflict with most people’s intended way of life are surrender and suffering. Many people I know are spirited, bring-it-on, and get-it-done kinds of people whose disposition is not to surrender or to cease resistance but instead to fight, particularly for their own rights or their perceived rights. In addition, most of the people I know well are wired to contest each struggle, battle, obstacle, conflict, or opposition they directly or indirectly encounter.